The Only Truth Is Music
by Intervigilium
Summary: Challenge Fic. "My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them." (Jack Kerouac)


**DISCLAIMER** : characters are property of J. K. Rowling. What they do with their spare time is their own business. Written for The Teachers' Lounge, Adults Only, Hard, Loud and Fast Challenge. For Adults.

There is a broken-down building at Charing Cross Road. No one enters it anymore.

Harry doesn't mention it, only committing to the memories its name evokes.

His neighbor with the weird hat speaks of it, though. Can't stop, really.

"Scheduled for demolition. Never thought I'd live to see the day. Sad, innit?"

Harry's mind is already lost in the past as he nods.

* * *

It's not interrogation, he reminds her; just a precaution. When you score O-level in your Potions NEWT and a smuggler of controlled substances admits he's sending some really peculiar items your way, someone must ask questions. That's why Harry's there.

"Do you know what vampire's blood can do to a wizard, Mr. Potter?"

"When mixed with what?" he asks her; the Auror instructors aren't in Snape's league (even he admits it), but their version of _beating you over the head with knowledge until you get it_ works better on him.

"It's the minutiae, you see," she goes on. "One can count the specks of dust in the air, or the ripples of a shiver running up and down a body. A lit match sparks like forest fire. Whispers can be made across the room, lips to ear, and it's as if the accomplice is you." The young woman pauses to settle back against her chair. "You feel _everything_."

"When mixed with what?" he insists.

"I never liked that word," she offers, shrugging. He appreciates the impertinence more than he cares to admit.

"What word?"

" _Mix_. It reminds me of his parents. I never liked the connotation they give it."

"I'm sorry," he laughs shortly. _That_ , Harry can understand. "Which word would you prefer me to use?"

"I've always favored combine."

"Combine?"

"Combine."

He nods.

"When _combined_ with what?"

* * *

 _Mind and blood make a dance floor out of you…_

They claim the song as theirs as a private joke. It's the one that's playing outside the first time it happens.

It's like his senses are all wired together and picking up each other's functions; the music vibrates along her thigh at it brushes his cheek. Later, when he pins her against a wall, her very breath sends her body wave after wave against his tongue, effortlessly. _Dance me_ , it says, and Harry does, hands holding on to all the right curves a second before her eyes tell him which ones to explore.

He remembers someone saying there are no straight lines in nature. Watching her body move with his, he knows nature to be divine, and accepts the quote as if written by Merlin himself.

She lets another crimson drop fall over her lips and dares him to steal it from her.

It's not metallic as it should be. There's an herbal, hypnotic nature to it, or maybe that's just her taste and it, combined. He extends one of her legs along his chest, caressing it as he pushes, eyes locked. Soft, strong. He learns her measures and her mouth opens without a scream. When the rhythm is right, she bites her lip and dares him to change the recipe or keep it going. Passion? Relief? Endorphins?

She's the missing ingredient, or the potion itself.

She takes everything out of him.

Absolutely everything.

* * *

He finds a sealed message on his desk, a week later. He wants to say he's surprised, and not exhilarated.

 _Tonight._

He implies they're to meet at the same place. As he leaves his desk, later that day, Harry's not sure what to think.

He wants to know why.

Harry, who couldn't understand the benefit of watching his nemesis' past, now wants to know the reason his feet are leading him away from his usual Apparition spot. He doesn't have a war to fight anymore – his relationship certainly doesn't feel like one. It's what is expected of them; he's practically a Weasley, anyway.

Being with Ginny, perhaps, is a commandment.

Then he opens the door and she's sitting indolently at the couch. She plays with a half-filled phial attached to a silver neck chain, dark liquid swirling inside, tracing patterns with the light along her shoulders and cleavage.

"If you want me to take off this dress," she says, piercing his very soul like a predator, "you'll have to work for it."

And there's the thing about commandments, really.

When you treat love like it's a religion…

… sometimes it will test your faith.

* * *

She's deeply disoriented, riding the untethered waves of euphoria along her spine as he carries her to bed.

He has worked for it. He played by her rules.

Then, and only then, he undresses her completely. She rolls to the side, blissful and relaxed, looking over her shoulder. The cool air of the bedroom clashes against her skin. He can smell it.

"Good boy," she taunts.

Harry flips her back over, causing a surprised gasp.

"I want to _see_ you," he whispers in her ear, teasing the contact, slow and steady, his movements only dictated by her increasingly uneven breaths. She radiates heat, all over.

Harry wonders, more than once, if the myth of Icarus originated because the Greek stared at the sun and saw the illusion of a woman just like her.

He'd go for it too.

* * *

Harry learns she likes water; its cleanness. Perhaps as a counterpoint to the base drives they've been indulging in for the last few months.

She puts a Muggle couple to sleep for a full day so they can enjoy their heated pool. When he sees them, he's truly shocked. He really is.

Their second break-in of the house, though, involves Harry surprising her with a Gillyweed strain that doesn't apply physical changes to the user, only the underwater breathing benefit for a shorter period of time.

"Figured a half-shark wasn't the way to go about it," he says as he surfaces later, smirking, and she laughs, pressing her lower back against him. _Deeper_ , she pleads.

He likes the alternate intents, the reversing roles. They sway together, and it's bliss, and pleasure, and release.

Or it's just agony and pain, and they're feeling too much of it to care these days.

* * *

"I like your hands", he confesses simply between grunted, shallow breaths.

And here's the point where they can start another innuendo contest that begins with wandless or nonverbal magic, but she looks him straight in the eye. And it's different this time.

Aristocratic. Obscene. Delicate. A goddess of the senses.

She starts tracing her way up his naked stomach and chest with her lips. He locks her waist in his hands, sliding her back a few inches as they kiss, eyes wide open; there's a different gleam in there – all the heightened senses given form by the forbidden liquid they've been sharing suddenly focus like a laser and Harry knows it's their last time. She is urgent. Desperate.

She knows it as well.

He moves with her like the world depends on it, one hand firmly on her waist, the other tightly grasping neck, hair and soul. It feels as if he's encapsulating her scent between his fingers as she leaves a final set of scars along his body, the scars she's always been very meticulous to erase before every goodbye, but never really leave him.

* * *

There is a broken-down building at Charing Cross Road. No one enters it anymore.

Harry doesn't mention it, only committing to the memories its name evokes.

The city they discovered together, and her name.

Sad, _London Astoria_. Sad, indeed.

And it's only fair that, as he walks by its derelict corner, a street musician performs his own rendition of their song.

 _Mind and blood make a dance floor out of you…_

 **AUTHOR NOTES** : bit of an experiment, this was. The rules of engagement were: make it hard, loud and fast. Which translates to sex, illicit substances, lyrics of your making, and keep it all within 1500 words.

The "lyrics" are from another story, "Ad Finem". I didn't write them as lyrics there, but a friend pointed out that I could.

Special thanks to littlebirds, for her talent and for creating the challenge.


End file.
